Yeah, but it's all due to how the game was designed. You don't get the full experience unless you "start over" at least 3/4 times. Needless to say, that really sucks. The second play-through felt like a chore at times, and I wasn't very motivated to play through it, as my expectations and motivation weren't that great after completing the anti-climatic, initial ending to a game that seemed mostly mediocre and predictable by today's standard.

The second play-through was almost identical, but filled in a few plot holes and added some new set pieces from the perspective of your assistant. Pretty neat feature, but they would've definitely been better off by just including it in the first play-through or making it optional or something, as opposed to making you play through the same story over again. Forcing you into repetition is not my idea of fun. Better yet, if they had managed to design the second play-through so that you actual do everything differently from the first play-through, then that could've potentially made the game so much better. Anyways, the ending to the second play-through hooked me in and drove me to start over a third time - which is an actual different experience that transitions into the introduction of another playable character who, in my opinion, has a more interesting backstory than the other two. Without spoiling anything, the third re-start of the game is more chaotic, strays away from the linearity and elements of cliché, and it makes the story so much more interesting. It's a very oddly designed game.

@Thimmy wrote:the story is a cliché with an anti-climatic ending that left me wondering if the other half of the game would continue after the credits stopped rolling down. so far I'm really disappointed in the overall product.

Can't believe I said it was cliché. It's been a while since the last time I played a game that had a story of such great quality. They don't come around often. I'll stop mentioning it from now on, but I strongly recommend Nier: Automata to anyone who's willing to sink some time into the game. You won't regret it, by the time you finish it... unless, you give up on the game after the first play-through, like I almost did

@Firenze wrote:looked very flashy but boring and repetitive to me, I think Thimmy mentioned the same, glorified hack-n-slash

correct me if I'm wrong though Thimmy, haven't played it

I shouldn't have judged the game after I'd only touched the surface of it's content. Didn't realize, at the time, that there's more than half the content left after you beat the short version of the game. The game did feel repetitive, at one point, as it forces you to play through the "shallow version" of the story twice, with relatively little variation. I also feel that they could've cut down on certain features that become rather redundant at times. There are a lot of things to nitpick about in the game. I was pretty annoyed after I'd completed the initial ending, which is short and is basically a good vs evil scenario. Starting the game over for the second time was annoying and felt like a chore at times, but what first seemed like an uninspired concept, turns into something of a masterpiece the longer you play it. It's difficult to explain, you just have to play it yourself, in order to understand it. What it does well, blends together and creates such a great experience in the end.

It's only after you've gotten towards the end of the second play-through that the story gets exponentially more interesting. Suddenly, a lot more content is added and you realize that the first play-through was kind of just.. a dummy ending to a story that's so much deeper. The characters that first seemed quite dull, become more relatable, and the story turns into a depressing chaos of philosophical thoughts and suicide. What was initially "the final boss" turns out to become irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, and the unoriginal good vs evil plot turns into a far more complex story with M. Shyamalan twists. It's an odd design, to say the least.

As for the combat.. it actually allows you to do a lot of really complex and advanced moves with air juggling and whatnot, but you're not going to need it if you're playing on lower difficulties, and I believe most people won't even be able to master the advanced moves, anyway. There aren't even any in-game tutorials for them, you have to look them up on the internet. You can use different weapon combos, pod abilities and chip customizations to create many different playing styles, so there's plenty of room for variation in how you do combat in the game.

But again, if you play on easy or medium difficulty @Firenze, you'll pretty much just have to hit square, triangle and dodge a lot. Easy mode even has features that make combat almost completely automatic There's also an insane-level difficulty, though. I played the game on medium, but I wish I had at least picked hard difficulty when I started.

And Mole, I'm pretty sure you'd love the game. Just be prepared that the first play-through is basically the demo + a short and unoriginal story. I was pretty disappointed after I had completed it, but the game gets exponentially better later on.

Prey is coming out already next month? The trailer looks good, but I'm not sure if I'll be getting it. I'm generally sceptical towards games that have gone through a tumultuous development process and several different development companies.

Henry wrote:"“Stepovers, tricks, that’s not the game. The game is what Thomas Muller is doing. If I had a son right now, playing, I would say to him ‘look at them, look at [Franck] Ribery, look at Muller.’ What Ronaldo does, and Messi, they’re just freaks. Don’t try to copy those guys. You can copy from Ribery, you can copy from Thomas Muller. What he did at the World Cup, people don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about it, but they should talk about it. He plays the game the right way: he defends, he attacks, he controls the ball when he has to control it, he reverses when he has to reverse it. When he has to finish, he’ll finish. He doesn’t do stepovers, but when he has to perform, he performs. He does what the game asks him to do.”"